


War Hawk

by alchemyarchetype



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Pining, Sebastian loves Hawke, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:02:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4117963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemyarchetype/pseuds/alchemyarchetype
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between one days of siege and another, Sebastian sees Hawke leaving the city of Kirkwall and follows her into the shadows of Sundermount. The confrontation that follows leaves him shaken and questioning the righteousness of his cause. Set between DA2 and DA:I</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Hawk

He sees her first. And if it had been the other way round, she would have been gone into the night before anything else could have happened. But everything does happen because Sebastian spots Hawke as she slips out of Kirkwall.

It is luck, chance, and little else that lets him see her. He and his army are camped at the base of Sundermount, the distant hushing waves of the Storm Coast visible as a bright band of silver on the horizon to the west. He had been staring at the city, his heart alternating between beating painfully in his throat at the renewed, swallowed rage and squeezing at a dozen, a hundred memories he had made there.

Most of those memories were good and that stung like rashvine.

All of the best ones were _hers_ and that was insult to injury.

He closes his eyes against the city, sullen and watchful in the night and against the remembered adventures she’d dragged him along on. Her bright, inviting smile whenever she found him in the Chantry, a nudge in his ribs and the start of a story.

“So you won’t believe this one,” she’d whispered to him a hundred, a thousand times and he’d always smiled. Always believed her. And, if she asked, was always ready to follow her wherever she led. Helping her, meeting her friends, being brought into the fold day by day and one near death experience after another had been the best part of Kirkwall. It had made him feel whole again, real again after the constant sedate and removed pace of the Chantry.

There was always a great deal of laughter when Sebastian had been with Hawke.

He opens his eyes slowly. It would be easier, he thinks, if she had been unpleasant. Rude or cruel or selfish… But she had never been any of those things. The scowl that twists his face is a terrible thing and it has become familiar on his face. Lines have already been gouged at the corners of his mouth, around his nose and across his brow.

If she was cruel then everything would have made sense. But she had always been kind. Sebastian swallowed against the ugly thought; had it always been a ruse? To what purpose? To get close to the Grand Cleric and help her precious Anders destroy everything?

Sebastian turns his face away from the city, bitterness rising in his throat like bile. He tries to push the memories away, where they won’t have the power to hurt him but they’re persistent, vicious things and they come back, taking swipes at him with each pass.

And then he sees her and he thinks at first it has to be a trick; he’s weary and thinking of her, of her bright eyes and the last thing he said to her, the threat he’d laid at her feet.

_“I swear to you, I’ll come back and find your precious Anders. I will teach him what true justice is!”_

_Her expression had changed then, had closed off. With Kirkwall burning around them, the flames painted across her cheeks in savage tattoos._

_Her smile, a smile he’d seen a hundred times before, had turned sharp then, had become a weapon._

_She’d pulled the staff from her shoulder._

_“And I’ll be with him.”_

Sebastian, trying to shake the memory of her threat in response to his, blinks hard, trying to force the phantom of Hawke away but she’s still there, moving like a serpent through the shadows.

He experiences a strange doubling of emotion, as though his eyes have become unfocused. He sees her and the first, knee-jerk reaction is joy. It’s bright and uncomplicated and so deeply shameful in the next moment that he feels off-balance, ill with the sudden whiplash.

Fury comes next, hot and hard and unyielding as stone. She’s alone and he doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or grateful. If Anders had been here he’s not sure what he would have done.

Beneath the brightness of the joy and rage, there’s something older, far more familiar to him than anything else: longing. It had always been there when they had fought and laughed together, with Fenris and Varric and Merrill and the others. It had been a sharp, sweet ache at first, fed by her sideways glances and teasing smile, the woman seemed incapable of not flirting and Sebastian had been just as susceptible as any of the rest.

Sebastian wants to strangle the longing, old and worn and familiar as it is, just as he wants to strangle the joy that had come from seeing her after so long. He wants only the rage, only hatred. What sort of man is he that he feels… warmth… for the woman who was responsible for Elthina’s death?

Sebastian doesn’t rouse any of his men; it doesn’t even occur to him to do so. It would take him precious minutes and no one knew the ’Mount or the coast like Hawke did. She’d be gone in another heartbeat; just one more shadow breathing from the besieged city.

He stalks after her, silent and patient and close, unsure of what he intends to do. He follows her through where the Dalish camp had once been, watches as she flutters from shadow to shadow, the moonlight catching on the edges of her armor and the fur mantle across her shoulders. He thinks that she knows that _someone_ is following her but doesn’t know who. If she did, he’s sure he would lose her to darkness… or perhaps she’d turn and simply end him as surely she had ended the Arishok.

The memory of that battle rises up like blood from a wound and he can remember the fear and awe and desperate, helpless anger as if they were new. He had never doubted that Hawke would fight for Isabela… or for any of them, really, had they needed her. Still, to accept a one-on-one battle with the leader of the Qunari had seemed mad, desperate.

She had looked very frail and very small and so very, very _human_ when she’d stood opposite the Arishok.

Throughout the entire fight he and the rest of Hawke’s friends had all watched, eyes riveted on her as she moved and spun and danced and fought for her life. They had gasped and cried and shuddered with each blow dodged and landed, had cheered when she had forced herself to her feet again and again. And when she had been run through by the Arishok’s blade, had writhed there shrieking, they had all moved forward as though to help.

But Hawke had gouged out one of the Arishok’s eyes with one vicious rake of her nails, had fallen to the ground and gotten up and kept fighting, bleeding and broken and dying.

She had been magnificent.

She had been _terrifying_.

Sebastian pauses, watching as Hawke stops and seems to scent the air around her. He wonders what she smells, what she’s questing for, wonders why she’s even there at all when she pivots on her toes. Her staff –one he doesn’t recognize—is in her hand, crackling with energy and suddenly Sebastian can’t move.

He feels an awful pressure closing around him with the suddenness of a man swatting a fly. It steals his breath and makes his skull feel as though it’s about to crack wide open. He can hear his bones creaking, even over the sudden thunder of his pulse.

“ _Hawke_ \--” his voice is strained, hoarse, barely his own but the pressure lets up immediately. He drops to his knees and she’s there in an instant, one hand on his shoulder, the other cupping his brow. Healing magic flows through him in a warm wave, rising up and healing the bruises and fractures her spell had inflicted. He catches the scent of her skin and hair, cold iron and fur, leather and woodsmoke and that foreign other perfume that he’d always caught from mages. Something like the smell of lightning but deeper, fuller, somehow alive. He finds himself taking deep, slow breaths and bites the inside of his mouth against the urge to catch her hand and bring it to his mouth.

But Hawke doesn’t linger. She flickers back where the light is bad, where the shadows dance and shift and disguise.

“Prince Sebastian,” she says and he can hear something like humor lilting through her voice. “What a pleasant surprise! Shall we dance? Once you get your breath back, of course.”

Her teasing tone is so familiar, so casual that Sebastian feels as though the years between Elthina’s death and this night have been rolled aside. They’re suddenly friends again. The world hasn’t gone mad and things might turn out all right after all.

He wheezes out a little laugh, seems helpless not to and sits back on his heels. He looks at her, sees the double moons sparking from her blue eyes and the laughter dissolves in his throat.

The shadows lay thick and dappled across her skin. The dark armor she wears seem to bleed into the murk of the copse she’s half-hiding in but her skin seems too bright, too white to be anything other than alabaster and pearl.

She stands tall and still, when she does move there’s strength there, of course, but there’s always been that curious suppleness to her steps, a thoughtless grace of something half-wild. She follows the wind, each careful half-step back and forward creating undulating, eye-watering designs and patterns of shadows and light over her. Her staff is in her hand still, a lance of metal that seems to give a low, subsonic moan.

“I don’t think I could keep up with you, Hawke,” Sebastian says finally.

“I dunno,” she shifts and he hears branches crackle around her, bending under her weight as she leans against them. The smile she sends his ways is the edge of a blade in the darkness. “I hear you’ve been doing well enough for yourself in Starkhaven. And now you’re an invader. Are congratulations in order or shall I just send you a card?”

The last is thrown out, flippant as an innocuous comment on the weather but the anger, seething and furious and pulsing in her voice, goads Sebastian into a response.

“I will do what I must to keep Kirkwall safe,” he spits.

“It’s a funny thing,” Hawke says thoughtfully, “Meredith said just the same. Before I killed her.”

Her voice is light, playful, inviting him to share on the joke but there are barbs in the words, threats and temper and hatred that makes Sebastian catch his breath. Her eyes flash and he smells the ozone-whiff of the Fade as she reaches for and then suppresses the magic that she wants to call.

They stare at each other for a moment, tense and silent. Sebastian slowly rises to his feet and he can sense rather than see or hear Hawke retreating further into the shadows.

“You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?” he asks softly, “You’d destroy the Chantry, kill Elthina. Doom all of Kirkwall.”

“Kirkwall was doomed from the start, Sebastian,” she says, turning to look at the city as it smokes and slumbers in the darkness, “it was always going to fall. Perhaps it even needed to fall.”

“How can you _say_ that? It was your _home_.”

She looks away from Kirkwall and back to him. The smile that splits her face is bright and hard. He sees murder in that smile.

“I lived beneath the heel of the Templars there, Sebastian,” she croons. Her staff begins to dance and swing in her hand. It whickers through the air, hissing and popping with restrained power, “I scraped through the slums and marched through the heights and it was all the same to me. I helped everyone who asked, tried to drag it away from that plunge but…”

The staff, flashing around her now, a blur of steel and crackling lightning. The light flickers out over her, strobing over her skin in hectic bursts. It reflects on the armor, creates strange shadows that pattern over her skin like lace and bruises. She’s hard to see and impossible to look away from and Sebastian blinks against the interplay of darkness and light. He wants to close his eyes but doesn’t dare.

“You destroyed it,” he hisses instead. “You might as well have killed the Viscount yourself.”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it,” she replies easily, lightly, her eyes drifting back to the city that had once been home. “I killed Orisino, after all. And Meredith. The Arishok. If I could have rounded it all out with the Viscount’s head then perhaps I could have sent away for a gift basket.”

Sebastian recoils from her. His sudden motion makes her look back over at him. Her smile is a flickering, edged thing. He shifts a little, pulls his bow from over his shoulder and her smile grows lazy and arrogant even as her focus narrows until he can practically feel it bearing down on him.

She stops twirling and spinning her staff. The shuttering patterns of light and shadow fade, leaving the little copse darker than before. The smile on her face teases at the corners of her lips. She moves her hand a little, inviting him to start. The gesture is so courtly and delicate that Sebastian feels off balance again. He takes a breath, the smell of wet earth and decayed leaves and sea salt overlying the stench of Kirkwall. Even out here there is no escaping the rotting, burning smell of the dying city.

“Well, Prince Sebastian?” her voice is low, inviting and so full of malice that Sebastian swallows.

He wonders if he could stand against her and win.

He wonders if he could stand against her and _live._

“I will take the city,” he tells her, “and when I do I will use all of it, and all of Starkhaven and all of my might to come after you and your Apostate.”

All of the humor vanishes from Hawke’s face and what’s left behind is nothing but shadow and will and hatred. There’s darkness there, he sees, darkness that stretches all the way down to her marrow. Past all of her humor and all of her charm and her easy ways and easier lies, there’s darkness at the root of her.

“Gather your cities, Sebastian,” she says. Her voice is a caress, soft and intimate and seems to hum faintly. “Gather your armies and gather all of your strength and all of your allies. And when you’ve taken up every weapon you can lay hands on, you come find me. Better men than you have tried and better men than you broken themselves against me.”

There’s an arrow notched and aimed at Hawke before Sebastian realizes he’s made the conscious decision to move. He’s breathing hard and he thinks he’s never moved faster but Hawke is lightning; her hips twist and her staff snaps out with a shriek that sounds nearly _alive_.

Light pulses through the night, so bright it blinds him and so hot that the grass and trees shrivel, withering as though under a long summer. The magic pulses against him, pushes past him and through him like a wave and he feels the bow in his hands shiver and tighten. He hears, distantly, something snapping and pain flares hot and sudden across his palms.

Sebastian jerks away from the sudden pain in his hands, thinking of fire and lighting and swords made of the pure Fade magic. He expects another assault and forces his screaming hands to close around the dagger at his belt, determined to be armed when Hawke attacks. He needn’t have bothered; the air is still and the only sound he can hear is the distant rush of the waves throwing themselves against the cliffs.

Eventually he manages to blink the flash-burn away from his eyes.

Hawke is gone. There’s not even a ripple in the shadows to indicate which direction she took. His hands sting and smart and he blinks down at them stupidly. Even in the moonlight he sees that his palms look raw, burned. He watches as blood begins to well up along his lifeline, black in the moonlight.

At his feet, his bow rests in two pieces, cut raggedly by whatever spell Hawke had flung at him. It could have carved great chunks out of his flesh but instead she had focused it on his weapon. The edges are red hot and the light flares and dims under the inconsistent breath of wind from the coast.

It was the bow that his grandfather had once promised him. The bow that Hawke had retrieved for him, had returned to him with a smile and flourish.

Sebastian crouches, running his fingers along the smooth, sleek wood that had seen him through so many battles. It’s beyond repair, he knows, really no better than kindling. Nonetheless he lifts both pieces, hissing at the pain in his hands and returns to where his soldiers are camped.

His throat feels tight and he can’t quite catch his breath but he’s alive, alive and unharmed and _why_ hadn’t she killed him? He’s never known Hawke to be merciful when someone threatens her or any of her friends.

The morrow will bring another long day of warfare, the snap of banners in the high wind and the thunder crack of catapults and trebuchets. He should rest and ready himself but his heart is a thrumming note in his chest and all he can concentrate on is the pieces of broken wood in his hands.

Why hadn’t she killed him?

He tries to find even footing along the mount, using the sullen, torch-lit glow of his army to guide him back to the path. A moment comes when he thinks he can feel her eyes on him and he turns, expecting a blow to come from the darkness. This close to camp, he’ll be found in moments and she’ll be hunted.

There’s a moment where Sebastian relishes the idea. Falling to Hawke and being found by his lieutenants. The cause of Kirkwall will be lost but he will have been proven _right._

But there’s nothing. The wind hums in his ears and the waves break against the shores and the cliffs and the stones and there’s nothing. His breath his shaky and he doesn’t know whether it’s from fear or sorrow or relief.

Sebastian nods to the soldier on watch and finds his way through the encampment. He acknowledges the greetings, the salutes that his soldiers throw his way him only because his father taught him to, that prince or commander, a man who didn’t return a salute was a man not to be trusted. He finally makes his way to the center of the camp and ducks into his tent.

The light is warm here, and the scent of leather and maps and ink is comforting, familiar. This has become his home and it likely the only one he will have for a long, long time. He sets the bow on a side table that elven servants had cleared of his evening meal. There is no one here. There are no generals, no soldiers, no servants… no friends.

His breath rushes out of him and he buries his face in his wounded hands, smearing blood across his cheeks and nose in an unknowing and unintentional salute to Hawke’s signature marking. His knees give way and he hits the ground with a thump, a soft, choked sound escaping on impact.

There’s something like a scream clogging his throat, he swallows convulsively, trying to push away the memory of Hawke’s face, her voice, her smile.

Her _hate_.

He lifts his face from the cradle of his palms and presses them together, ignoring the flare of pain as the new wounds strain and stretch. Fresh blood wells but Sebastian bows his head, pressing his forehead to his interlaced fingers and begins to pray.

“Andraste guide me,” he whispers, “Maker shield me--”

The words are rough and they don’t bring the comfort they usually bring, that they’re _supposed_ to bring. He shakes his head, pressing his fisted hands tighter together. The wounds on his palms sting, ache, bleed. He reaches for the faith, for the rightness he’d felt when he set out on this Crusade and tastes ashes and bile on his tongue.

His eyes are drawn, again and again, to the broken bow. The charred cut has blackened, the treated wood is acrid in his nose and he swallows heavily and closes his eyes, shuts out the image of the empty tent and the burned pieces of a weapon that had once meant so much to him.

He’d told the truth when Hawke had given the bow back to him; if it had meant having a single servant from his home back he would have snapped it with his own hands. Would have been _glad_ to. But now it lies broken and Sebastian feels more hopeless and more alone than he ever has.

“Let this be the right thing,” he whispers, “let this be the righteous path. Help me.”

The Maker is, as ever, silent.

Sebastian swallows back a shriek of… something. Rage, frustration, loss, he can’t tell. It burns his throat, scalds his tongue, makes tears jump to his eyes. For one, mad, desperate moment he wishes Hawke was there again. Not to fight or argue, not even to prove to her that his cause, his pain was just but because she had always been a friend, an advisor when his faith had wavered.

He reaches out blindly, rests his hand on the broken bow. Blood slicks along the smooth wood but his hand curls around it convulsively. The pressing terror and grief and confusion fade and Sebastian bows his head again, breathing past the ache in his throat and the scent of ashes.

“Maker, give me strength,” he whispers, “Shield and guide me. Show me the path through the darkness and let my steps not waver. Lend me strength that I might lead, stay my hand when my compassion falters. Please.”

_Maker, keep her safe._

His hand tightens around the bow until he hears the wood creak. The cuts along his palms ache and he rises slowly, feeling hollowed out and empty. He shakes his head, shakes the feeling away along with the memories and sets about dressing the wounds.

The morrow will bring more battle and if he must break Kirkwall before he can save it, then that is what he will do.

Andraste preserve him.


End file.
